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Washburn Rural High School had four critical food safety violations in the past year — remarkable, considering 1,500 students eat lunch there every school day.

Given the limited time frame, that comes to about 500 students served in 10 minutes, three times a day, said Stan Vallis, the district's food service supervisor.

"It's pretty crazy," he said. "It’s amazing how quick we go through that line."

The entire Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 has logged only 14 critical violations since Jan. 1, 2013, coming to an average of less than one critical violation per inspection. It was one of two county districts not to have a follow-up visit in the past 13 months. The other was Kaw Valley Unified School District 321.

"The numbers are a byproduct of how we do our job," Vallis said. "We don’t push to make a food safety inspection. We just do our job."

Shawnee County's 69 public and private cafeterias logged 136 violations from Jan. 1, 2013, through Jan. 31, 2014, according to Kansas Department of Agriculture records. That averages to less than one critical violation per inspection. Shawnee County food establishments overall averaged nearly two.

School cafeterias are held to the same food safety standards as other restaurants, and even are inspected on more often, said Adam Inman, assistant program manager in the KDA's food safety division. KDA inspectors attempt to visit school cafeterias once every semester, he said. Other establishments are visited once per fiscal year.

School cafeterias have their own sets of challenges, Inman said, from the sheer number of people served to those districts that transport food between locations.

"Like anyone, different people have different acceptance to compliance," he said. "Generally, in schools, the staff are very dedicated, and of course everybody wants to have the safest food possible for the kids."

Vallis has been around restaurants for many years, and knows school cafeterias have some advantages over other restaurants.

For one, his staff knows what to expect every day, from the menu to the number of customers. For another, about half of the food is "heat and eat," he said. Also, the cafeteria has limited hours.

But compliance, he said, comes down to the people who staff the kitchens.

“We hire really good people,” he said. “They just really love their work, and it shows in the way they perform.”

In the past 13 months, six schools required at least one follow-up visit in the past 13 months. Six of the inspections had something wrong with sinks, either that one wasn’t operational or didn’t reach a proper temperature. One required a follow up because of issues with procedure for monitoring food temperatures.

Fifty-one of the county’s public and private schools had no more than two critical violations. Seventeen had no violations at all.

In Shawnee Heights Unified School District 450, for example, four of its seven schools cleared inspections with no critical violations in the past 13 months. The entire district had just five critical violations since the start of last year, resulting in the lowest average critical violation per inspection of 0.25.

Only two schools raked in double digit critical violations: Topeka Unified School District 501’s Chase Middle School and the private Hayden High School. Both had 10 critical violations and an average of more than three per inspection — the highest among area schools. Violations ranged from not keeping food to temperature and storing dirty items as clean.

"Our staff in the kitchen works hard to make sure that food safety is taken care of in our cafeterias," said Hayden president Rick Strecker. "We feel badly when there’s any violation."

On its Jan. 29 inspection, the KDA employee noted rice, corn and broccoli that were out of temperature. Hayden’s freezer and walk-in cooler were packed to the brim, and some containers had duct tape sealing cracks on the food contact surface.

On its Feb. 12 follow-up visit, KDA inspectors found ham, lasagna, vegetables and chili in a walk-in cooler that were too hot for the state’s safe holding temperatures. Although all items were discarded, the repeat violation was enough to call for a second follow-up visit, date yet unknown.

Old mouse droppings — considered a noncritical violation — were found by the washer unit on both inspections.

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It would be beneficial for inspections to be performed right before the serving of the lunch food. The reason for this is because the food is lukewarm or cool. This is the case for foods such as the fish bites, chicken pops, cooked vegetables, mashed potatoes, etc. This is pretty routine and the overall concern has been the maintained temperature of the food items that are prepared off-site and delivered to schools. It was interesting when looking at each school that was inspected that there appeared to be but a few where prepared food was actually temperature checked versus the majority of others seemed to be stored food in the walk-in coolers.

As a result, the inspection 'report cards' are not reassuring to me as I think many who have ever actually eaten school cafeteria foods that are delivered from off-site prep schools would concur. For the food to be cool to lukewarm it has either been sitting a room temperature for some time or has been sitting in deficient temperature control containers.

Food inspectors have a tremendously challenging job and do great work. My observation is that it would be well-served to inspect schools right before and/or during lunchtimes, especially for those schools where food is delivered to them.

USD #501 for almost 5 years. In those years we never had an un-announced inspection. We always were told in advance of the inspectors arrival. I can tell you that by the time the inspector arrived there wasn't much that hadn't been checked and re-checked. Of course we couldn't always catch everything but the inspector had to look very had to find something wrong. They should hold surprise inspections sometime after their scheduled inspections. Just to see if everything is being kept the way they found it on their regular inspection. Oh! and in those years the inspector was there only once at serving time.